Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday January 24, 2013 @05:37AM
from the power-to-the-people dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Internet activists in Finland, upset with the country's strict copyright laws, are ready to take advantage of the country's promise to vote on any citizen-proposed bill that reaches 50,000 signatures.
Digital rights group Common Sense in Copyright has proposed sweeping changes to Finland's Lex Karpela, a 2006 amendment to the Finnish copyright law that more firmly criminalized digital piracy. Under it, 'countless youngsters have been found guilty of copyright crimes and sentenced to pay thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands, of euros in punitive damages to the copyright organizations.'
The proposal to fix copyright is the best-rated and most-commented petition on the Open Ministry site."

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

What more US can do that has not already done to Finland? I mean, look... isn't enough they pushed Elop as the Nokia head? (grin: it's Obama's fault, isn't it?)

With a AAA [guardian.co.uk] credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas [energydelta.org] (100% dependence on Russia).

It is. Gas is also used for heating. Amongst other things.
Europe is also highly dependant on Gazprom. And they have been known to throttle their pipelines in winter if something wasn't to their liking.

This thread of conversation seems to already have gone down the tubes, and I don't mean gas-tubes. I think most people meant it as jokes, but when future schoolchildren will Google it up they'll find this Slashdot discussion, and then update Wikipedia accordingly (Think of the children!), so to try to put the record straight on a few things...

Finland has 4 operating energy production reactors, one research/medical reactor that's in the process of being shut down (Turns out using nuclear power for good [www.vtt.fi] is to

With 5 nuclear plants, Finland is not at all dependent on Russian gas.

yeah of course not. we can just offset the energy consumption from the lost gas with electricity bought from russian nuclear plants!we could import more coal, oil and whatever to offset it in reality though.. but those five nuclear plants don't really cover all that much.. btw don't order any french generators if you want them on time.

and before usa could demand any sanctions.. eu would need to kick finland out before that and they damn well wouldn't do it over any copyright stuff.

They can fix and improve and change as much as they want. The moment it is out and the US doesnt like it, starts accusing Finland of "theft" and threatens painful trade sanctions, they will have to revert it back or face consequences more severe than putting up with the current copyright.

Copyright is simply too valuable for the few influential stakeholders to be allowed to be decided democratically.

What more US can do that has not already done to Finland? I mean, look... isn't enough they pushed Elop as the Nokia head? (grin: it's Obama's fault, isn't it?)

With a AAA [guardian.co.uk] credit rating, the only nasty thing would scare the Finnish people would be the Russian to cut their gas [energydelta.org] (100% dependence on Russia).

Yes, all gas is coming from Russia, but You failed to notice that gas is only a minor player in Finnish energy production. 9.6 % of Finnish energy comes from gas. It can also easily be replaced with other sources if need be.

Yes, all gas is coming from Russia, but You failed to notice that gas is only a minor player in Finnish energy production. 9.6 % of Finnish energy comes from gas. It can also easily be replaced with other sources if need be.

So, are you saying the Finnish people are stupid and buy the rest of 90.4% of gas with no reason, 'cause they actually don't need it at all?

Do you really think the US would trade sanction an EU state? I doubt it. They may face pressure from the EU itself but the last thing the EU needs is to start pissing off the states that actually pay their own way.

I still applaud the initiative, it is passing laws for the nation, by the nation and finland has some very smart folks, i dont think they will change the law in a contra-productive way and if the 'almighty uncle sam' doesnt like it but finland pushes forward maybe its because they can do without the US, this is not a couple dozen guys dictating laws, this is thousands of people

I still applaud the initiative, it is passing laws for the nation, by the nation and finland has some very smart folks, i dont think they will change the law in a contra-productive way and if the 'almighty uncle sam' doesnt like it but finland pushes forward maybe its because they can do without the US

In fairness, shouldn't such trade sanctions apply only to U.S.-copyrighted works? Since otherwise it's really none of our business. "No, Finland, you can't have any more of our Hollywood movies.... what's that cheering noise??"

If this is even remotely successful then a lot of lobbyists will get their knickers in a twist.
The chances of this being ratified should be rather slim due to:
-international treaties
-legality of the law without having to rewrite other laws
-being watered down in parliament...

I would guess a lot of lawyers will work on this thing. So chances are this might be the best written piece of legislation never to be signed.

the common democratic illness is that we vote for politians based on how well they look in a suit, how loud they shout their simple truths and how long ago they had their last sex scandal. Should be credibility, competence and merit. Oh well.

It has to? Wow! What kind of majority is needed to pass it? Is there even a slim chance for that?
Now the question is if the general population will even care why they turn it down. If the vote is "no" and not enough people really care then all this is in vain.

Well, Finland is only 5.4 million people so if they can hit the 50k mark it already means 1% of the population cares. That said it looks like the site has just recently opened and the highest vote is slightly over 1k now, so a long way to go.

Odds are the language in the treaties will be along the lines of "must have copyright laws." If the country continues to have copyright laws but these laws have sane punishments built in (eg, steal a song that is available from itunes for a Euro, be fined 3 Euros. Distribute a song 10 times that is available from itunes for a Euro be fined 3 x 10 Euros)

The general gist of the law they are proposing is to make the punishment fit the crime. There may be a wishlist for shortened copyright periods and regist

International treaties is the key. Why do you think all copyright legislation has started as treaties? Because no voter in sane mind would force such law upon it's country. But voter doesn't understand, doesn't bother him - at least it's regular thinking of politicians these days. So they agree to treaty, then just come home and say "we done anything we could, but this must be a law now".

They are the back door how many bad ideas concerning copyright laws have been pushed throughout the world. Most of them came from the US.
Like the insane UK extradiction treaties one has to wonder WHY the national parliaments actually do such an unneccessary thing. The US certainly is not at fault to ask other countries for such thing. But parliaments of these countries certainly are at fault when acting against the interests of their own people.

It is not surprising though. The only thing the US leads the world on now is IP, so they want the world to protect it. Back when they were a fledgling state they were quite happy to steal IP from Europe and designed their laws accordingly (i.e. they refused to recognise European patents for quite a few years).

The mystery is why everyone else is colluding with the US on IP laws. The power they have is that of a school yard bully. The moment someone stands up to them it is all over since it is paid for with o

And there comes in that phrase "it's not that simple", because, frankly, it isn't. Usually agreement with these IP treaties are binded with other trade treaties. For example, US say - "hey, you have nice steel export to us. That would be a shame if tariffs went up suddenly, wouldn't it". Because exports are practically only way how countries can repay their debts and imports. So US uses it's "biggest consumer" card now and then to force IP regime around the world.

While bashing the US is popular on Slashdot, those with a more balanced perspective understand that real situations almost never come down to a question of USA vs. The Rest of The World.

The organizations that make money from copyright have stockholders and / or owners that are citizens of many different countries. Further, in all likelihood, as is the case with other big corporations, many of the employees of these organizations will come from countries other than the USA.

International treaties is the key. Why do you think all copyright legislation has started as treaties? Because no voter in sane mind would force such law upon it's country. But voter doesn't understand, doesn't bother him - at least it's regular thinking of politicians these days. So they agree to treaty, then just come home and say "we done anything we could, but this must be a law now".

And? If, by popular demand, the law is amended so that gets incompatible with the signed treaty, you think is impossible for the country to walk back from that treaty? Think again [duhaime.org]

Another important distinction between a treaty and a conventional contract is that a treaty lacks any enforcement teeth.

They can. But there will be consequences. Unfortunately US is one of biggest consumers and no politician in it's right mind would want to piss off it and face problems with exports to US. But exports gives you jobs and allows you to repay debt you took to finance roads, schools, etc.

They can. But there will be consequences. Unfortunately US is one of biggest consumers and no politician in it's right mind would want to piss off it and face problems with exports to US. But exports gives you jobs and allows you to repay debt you took to finance roads, schools, etc.

It's not that simple.

Uh, oh. Does it wake you up that US markets makes 4.9% of Finland's export [wikipedia.org]? Comparing with the exports to Russia of 9.2%, Germany of 10% and Sweden to 11.8%, it seems quite low.

Also, did you know that Finland has less population than New York City? I don't know why I feel all of them will survive quite well to an upset US.

Actually, I read though the proposal (and signed it). It seems to make a lot of sense, and it's really well thought out.

If this is even remotely successful then a lot of lobbyists will get their knickers in a twist.

The chances of this being ratified should be rather slim due to:

-international treaties

This isn't some teenage hacktivism, this is actually really well thought out modifications. The changes aren't huge, but still significant. The proposal also takes into account internation treaties and works within their restrictions.

-legality of the law without having to rewrite other laws

The suggestion specifically refers to other laws, and how the changes make it more compliant than the current version. They also seem to have touched upon points that have to have modifications.

-being watered down in parliament...

ok, this I just learnt from the comment below, so credit wher credit is due

As for the watering down, if the proposal (a complete law text) passes the 50,000 vote mark, the Finnish parliament has to vote on it AS IS.

I would guess a lot of lawyers will work on this thing. So chances are this might be the best written piece of legislation never to be signed.

the common democratic illness is that we vote for politians based on how well they look in a suit, how loud they shout their simple truths and how long ago they had their last sex scandal. Should be credibility, competence and merit. Oh well.

I agree that politics can be too populistic, but in general I think it's works quite well here. As for the proposal, I'm very positively suprised at the quality, the moderation and the execution of it.

Sure, you can crowdsource and gather signatures all you want - have fun, at least you will feel more in control. All you get is to submit your proposition for parliament to vote on. At which point the same lobbyists and paid politicians as usual make the decision. There is no way in hell this is going to pass.

There is an citizen's initiative to change the law and if they manage to gather 50000 signatures, the parliament must vote on it. No crowdsourcing (at least any more) and slim change of this initiative passing through the parliament and actually becoming a law.

1) Few copies of legally obtained copyrighted material can be copied for private use2) Private use includes family members and best friends.3) In court the "few copies" has been seen to be 10 copies4) You are allowed to outsource the copying if needed (you can give copyrighted material to third party what copy them for you and give original and all copies back).5) Downloading from Internet isn't illegal, it is just admonished, but sharing (uploading) is criminalized.6) You can brake the DRM if it is necessary to get music to be heard, video to be seen or text to visible (etc)7) You can transform content to another if it is required to get content available. (meaning you can make a copy of DVD as VHS if other has only VHS player. Or transcode WMA to MP3 if only having a MP3 player).8) If original media is destroyed, stolen or lost, all copies needs to be destroyed.9) You can not make new copies from copies or release them to any other third party (non-family members, not best friends)

In Finland you are allowed to borrow a CD music from library and make those 10 copies for you, to your family members and best friend. Any of those copies can be a version in MP3 files, a CD or WMA etc, as long the amount is same.You can as well buy a latest movie/music from store with your 4 friends, make 3 copies and divide the music price by 4. Meaning 20 euros music is just 5 euros for each of one.You can as well rent a movie for few euros and make a copy of that for private use.You are allowed to record movies and shows from TV and make few copies of them as well for private use.

But all this has a cost.You need to pay a small tax in every empty CD, DVD, HDD, SSD and now on memory sticks as well. It is about 15 euros from HDD what is bigger than 750GBAbout a 15 cent on empty DVD and about 10 cent on empty CD.Every importer is demanded by law to pay that and that is transferred to device/media prices.

But people are mad about it!Many are mad of it because "I pay more about empty media/storage than I should" and many even promote their ideas by saying "I only store my own music and my own photos and videos to those medias". And still most doesn't even understand that spending a few euros a year for that tax, you can make as many copies for private use from legally obtained copyrighted material as you wish.

Teens usually listen same music with their friends. Instead them needed to buy a own CD (2 x 20 euros) to CD-player and then again MP3 version (2 x 10-15 euros for album) phone/mp3-player, they can together buy just a single CD, make copies of it and transcode music as MP3 files in 20 euros.

How about lex karpela?Lex Karpela was a addition to copyright law what criminalized braking strong DRM. That what was "strong DRM" was not written at all. Later two man went and wanted to test that law in court. Other one made a DVD with a CSS encryption in it. Then borrowed it to friend, what made a copy of that disk by braking the CSS. And then the copyright owned (who borrowed DVD to friend) sued friend to court demanding 5 cent penalties.The whole case when to higher court and back, and it was given a judgment criminalizing the friend who broke the encryption because it was not possible "in mistake". The problem was what many doesn't understand, the friend made DVD was not made legally public, it was a personal DVD with DRM.The copyright law demands the copyrighted material is published legally. Meaning it is that companies what presents, plays, prints etc media, can not control citizens rights to share information and cultural material.But when a private person makes a own media, she or he owns the copyright for it but just by borrowing it to friend, doesn't mean he or she published it. So it isn't legally obtained material in the first place unless you ask permission from your friend "can I make a copy to myself from your made movie what you

1) Few copies of legally obtained copyrighted material can be copied for private use

Means getting the material from other sources like a P2P networks, DC hubs and so on, are not from legal sources and they can not be copied, borrowed or given to a other people, not even for your family and friends.

Of course you can make a own P2P network among your friends or your family and share data with them, as those technologies are not illegal (and copyright law doesn't say they would be) but the actions using those tools illegally is.... illegal.:)

I don't know about Finnish law, but in Hungarian law it's legal to download, because the average person has no obligation to research the copyright status of things found on the internet.On the other hand uploading is illegal, but torrent users haven't been sued yet, only tracker operators.

5) Downloading from Internet isn't illegal, it is just admonished, but sharing (uploading) is criminalized.

So Finns should download from Usenet instead of using P2P, or use a hacked BitTorrent client that doesn't upload.

But all this has a cost.You need to pay a small tax in every empty CD, DVD, HDD, SSD and now on memory sticks as well. It is about 15 euros from HDD what is bigger than 750GBAbout a 15 cent on empty DVD and about 10 cent on empty CD.

How do you get your cut of that? Say you are a random person who picks up a guitar, learns how to play it and releases an album (self published). How do you claim your share of this tax?

How do you get your cut of that? Say you are a random person who picks up a guitar, learns how to play it and releases an album (self published). How do you claim your share of this tax?

You can apply for an exemption [hyvitysmaksu.fi] on the tax for whatever media you decide to publish your work on. This assumes that the media would be used exclusively for works you own, such as CD or DVD, and you'd avoid the few cents of tax on each (at least, on -R media, but obviously not on -RW media).

If you were to distribute digitally via the net or on pre-recorded memory sticks or suchlike, then you'd have to join one of these organizations [hyvitysmaksu.fi] to get compensated. Note, also, that you'd be unlikely to get very much un

But all this has a cost.
You need to pay a small tax in every empty CD, DVD, HDD, SSD and now on memory sticks as well. It is about 15 euros from HDD what is bigger than 750GB
About a 15 cent on empty DVD and about 10 cent on empty CD.

This is where the law COMPLETELY falls apart. This is absolutely and completely unacceptable. Who decides the breakdown of this collected tax? What about artists not in the golden tax guild, how do they get their share? How do we know it's going to the copyright holders period?

Damn right people are mad about it. I'd be pissed, too. America had that tax on blank tapes, too. There are special "music" blank cds that are more expensive because they have that tax as well, but in all frankness, fuck them if they

While the parent comment is mostly true, it is very much cherry picking the most positive facts about the copyright issues. It also unnecessarily condecending towards "normal people" who don't understand why things cost and what property is. More than that, the parent post is widely irrelevant to the whole copyright reform, almost offtopic. Those were not the issues being modified (except Lex Karpela).

The points addressed in the proposal were completely different, one of the points in the proposal was even

It was a to compensate losses what artists suffered from people sharing their copyrighted material.

There a problem with this. They cannot prove that artists suffer due to piracy. It has been shown time and again that sharing people's songs among friends promotes the music and increases the chance that they will buy music in future and/or go to concerts.

But hopefully some of my likeminded Finnish brethren can see about some sane wording, like no more than 14 year copyrights for corporations, and 28 year copyrights for individuals.

An additional worthwhile amendment would be: 'While copyrighted works created locally will be considered expired after 14-28 years, foreign copyrights will be respected up to their legally agreed upon terms, insofar as our locally produced copyrighted works are protected to the same foreign copyright limits.'

14 years for corporations would be good... As in that time your material is already done its purpose as cultural addition.28 for individuals would be good as if you are artist/photographer/song writer etc you need to have little stronger copyright.

In 14 years a movie can either come a legendary or just "one of the xxs movie"A music can come a legendary what is played after decade it was released and still you get paid for it.But why should anyone being paid from something what their parents did and get mone

ps. Of course open source needs very strong copyright protection so it can not be turn to closed source.

No, it does not need more copyright protection then any other creation. If a software doesn't evolve for 7 years, do you think that software worth much? And, if does evolve, you think a 7 years old version entering public domain (and being included in a closed source software) is something to be scared of?

The content mafia will be astroturfing the crowd to the max that they can get away with... they have the software to enable their shills to appear as hundreds of other "citizens". So unless there are identity safeguards to positively identify each contributor as a registered citizen, they'll get the legislation they've always dreamed about...

6/7 years ago, the Finnish parliament voted in the current "pussi paskaa" copyright law. Now, assuming that more than 1% of the population adds their names to a poll in favour of that law being amended (probably a racing certainty), the Finnish parliament has to vote yes/no on the question "did we make a huge mistake here?".

Given that Finland is part of the Euro currency group within the EU, there will probably be significant pressure from political groups within the EU that are backed by the European copyright lobby, as well as significant pressure generated by the RIAA/MPAA. There will also be pressure domestically from the Finnish copyright lobby, which was powerful enough to get the law passed in the first place.

So unless the number of people signing up for a review of the law exceeds 50% (probably not even then... 75% or even 90% might be needed) of the population of Finland, I doubt there is much chance of a vote on the subject gaining the required parliamentary support to overturn or amend the law.

Not this parliament maybe, but how about the next parliament? After this vote you know which MP or party you should vote for next time. And put this same (or updated) bill up for public poll and subsequent parliamentary vote again.

Remember that's 50,000 self-selected people. All it says that at least 1 in 100 people favour a law change so if it fails to pass it's hardly proof positive of a failure of democracy. The benefit of this system is that it gives the people a better voice rather than being crowded out by organised lobby groups, financial or otherwise. It doesn't mean those lobby voices will, or should be, ignored.

It's pretty close to 1% of the whole population of the nation, including newborns and the elderly.

Okay, sure, but do both of those groups have suffrage? (I can see the get-out-the-vote campaigns for the babies....free teething rings for all!)

- 1% of americans would be around 3 million people. Would you sign a petition that REQUIRED 3 million signatures?

Sure, if it was aimed at a useful result like "Don't let the telcos off the hook for helping the NSA violate the 4th Ammendment," or "Reform copyright law so it doesn't last forever minus a day". To be honest, a fair number of the petitions on the Whitehouse's petition site (that have passed the required bar to receive a response) concern issues that are interesting and relevant to most Americans. It's just that 5 or 500 petitions to legalize marijuana aren't going to do a damn thing, because the President doesn't have the political clout or the personal motivation to "make it so".

It sounds like this petition mechanism might actually effect real change -- the kind of change that political parties over on this side of the Atlantic promise up and down the campaign trail, but which, if it ever materializes, doesn't pack quite the same punch as promised -- and for that, I am quite envious of you Finns.

Crowd-sourcing political change is a complete waste of time as currently constructed. Instead, a 'kickstarter'-like approach is required, where citizen promise a certain level of financial bribe if a law is passed/modified.

Modern 'democracies' (which are anything but), based on the British model, reflect only the wishes of powerful pressure groups- groups that actually represent tiny minorities, but minorities that are willing to put money directly into the pockets of bent politicians. And most politicians